Record Your Band With A One Channel Interface

You’ve heard me say it before and I will continue to harp on this, “It doesn’t take much to make a great recording at home.” People are recording songs on laptops with minimal gear (even on cell phones). Today I wanted to feature a cool video from Apogee Digital. These guys make premium converters and other high end gear for the studio, but they also make the super popular (and portable) Duet firewire interface for the mac.

Even Simpler

Their latest interface is a simple one channel USB version, aptly called “One”, and is making a big splash in the audio world for not only its quality mic pre and converter, but its built in condenser microphone. That’s right, this interface actually comes with a studio mic inside. There are a ton of videos on Apogee’s site showing you how people are making recordings with this thing, but one stood out to me as a great example of using mimial gear to make great recordings.

Watch as these guys record guitar, bass, vocals, and even drums all with a one channel USB interface and the free DAW Garageband. Enjoy!

The Takeaway

This video reminds us of some very important truths in recording: simplicity is a good thing, mic placement is super important, and the actual song and performance has to be good inorder for the recording to be great. If we simply brush off these points then we miss out. We begin a rat race of buying gear in search of that illusive “sound”.

Why not save yourself some time and money and start with what you have? Make a lot of bad music until you learn what it takes to make it better. It’s how all the great ones learn, from doing.